“Ah! But Leman did not surrender.”
“Certainly not,” said Rigaux, who was, in secret, very well informed of all that was in progress along the front. His wireless—worked by a German naval wireless operator who lived in seclusion in his house at Brussels—had, for days been picking up all the official messages, the operator having in his pocket the key to the war-cipher.
Not a move on land or on sea on the part of the Germans but was known at once to Arnaud Rigaux, who daily handed to the fair-haired young operator a brief report of what was in progress in Brussels. This the young man reduced to code and transmitted it, after having called up the German station at Nauen. Other stations heard it, but the message being in a code specially supplied for the purpose, it conveyed to them no meaning.
Arnaud Rigaux, the most clever and most dangerous spy which Germany possessed on Belgian soil, was, because of his high position as a financier, still unsuspected.
From his manner the Baron could see that his friend had come out from Brussels hastily, in order to tell him something which he hesitated to do in the presence of the ladies.
“So an advance is really being made towards Brussels and the Government has moved to Antwerp?” Aimée asked anxiously. “The papers are so vague about it all.”
“I fear that is so,” was Rigaux’s reply. “It seems, too, that the British are moving uncommonly slowly. They have not yet, it is said, embarked their expeditionary force, as we fully expected they would have done days ago.”
“The British, if they move slowly, always move very surely,” was the girl’s reply. “I was at school in England, you know, and I am quite aware of their slowness.”
“It is fatal in war, Mademoiselle. Why are they not here to help us—eh? We have relied upon them.”
“They will be here soon, and when they come they will give a good account of themselves, never fear. They are tried soldiers. The Germans have never seen a modern war. They are only swaggerers.”